Visitor location registers (VLRs) track mobile terminals currently receiving telecommunications service in a serving coverage area of their respective mobile switches, which is different from the home serving area of the mobile terminal subscriber. Real-time access to data contained in the VLRs (e.g., the mobile terminal's location) has the potential to create a new stream of revenue for service providers. Service providers, network operations teams, and third party marketing departments could use mobile terminal location information aggregated across multiple areas to make important decisions related to network operations (e.g., network capacity planning) and marketing activities (e.g., targeted advertising).
Disadvantageously, the ability to quickly identify how many mobile terminals users are in a particular location at a specific time is not the kind of information that is readily available. Also disadvantageously, the ability to determine how many mobile terminals users were in a particular location area over a specified period of time is not possible currently. Further disadvantageously, contacting all mobile terminals or a specific set of mobile terminals in a specific location via a Short Message Service (SMS) message is also not possible, unless the user of the mobile terminal currently opts into a network application service and continually provides its location to the associated application server, which adds more load onto the network as well as drains the mobile terminal's battery.